Ice cream and cool tools fix everything

This past week has been kind of rough, since my crappy joints are hating the crazy weather and have rebelled. I delayed this post to give them a break from typing. Luckily, there are other fun things to keep my mind off it!

This week I'm:

• Listening to: Adele. I love 19, especially "My Same" and "Crazy for You". Her voice goes well with the fun beats, the piano, or on its own on the album. Have definitely been listening to this about once a day. :-) I've heard a few technocized versions of "Hometown Glory" in the Forever 21s of Chicagoland, but I think I like the original version best.

• Eating: maple ice cream. Considering how good this is, I'm surprised I've never seen this in an ice cream parlor. I even worked for Ben & Jerry's for a few months and never experienced anything maple. From now on I'll look harder! I think this flavor goes well with other fall foods (pumpkin, anyone??) and might be a nice change from all the cookies and pies we'll be eating soon. Although I've only tried maple and walnut ice cream, here's a recipe from the blog Erin's Food Files that looks delicious...

• Playing with: tools for women!! Whoever thought of this was a genius, mainly because few guys will want to steal a screwdriver covered with floral patterns. Also, I appreciate the gesture to redesign something almost always made for men but definitely used by women. However, making everything pink does NOT count as "designing for women", as some tool companies have done. If you want to hear more about that, check out Femme Den, a group that does consulting on redesigning for women without turning everything pink. I have a similar tool set as the one pictured below, given to me by my mom, a fellow woman engineer.

Kings, Cups, and Honey

It's been a rainy week in Chicago. Fall is still my favorite season here though - lots of colors and not too cold. :-)

This week I'm:

• Listening to: Kings of Convenience. According to their Wikipedia article they're from Norway. I've only experienced their album "Riots on an Empty Street" so far, but I'm excited to check out "Declaration of Dependence" sometime soon. This band falls into the category of quiet indie. My favorite songs so far are "I'm Rather Dance With You" and "Surprise Ice". Some of their songs have great lyrics that are funny but still kind of insightful. I love the harmony in the chorus on "Surprise Ice".

• Eating: Really Raw Honey. I tasted this honey at the Chicago Green Festival last year and haven't been the same since. I bought some on the spot, and got another (gigantic) jar last week. It's so thick and sweet, it's like spreading pure sugar on bread, only better. I highly recommend it even if you don't think honey is for you.

• Checking out: "I Am Not A Paper Cup..." coffee cups by DCI Products. I saw this at the Art Institute in Chicago, and initially thought it was a play on Magritte's "This Is Not A Pipe" painting. This cup actually isn't made of paper, however, but is porcelain and silicone. I think this design is pretty clever: taking something anyone would recognize as disposable and making it permanent.

Calexico, Macarons, Alexander McQueen

It's time to change things in this blog - yay! Much as I liked writing just about design last year, I realized over the summer many of my favorite conversations were about the small things that keep me going every day: the music I play on repeat while I do work, the junk food I sneak in between meals, the random item I spend hours looking at online... When I like something I tend to surround myself with it, but I love finding something new to keep around. So this blog is going to be about just that: my weekly addictions.

This week I'm....

• Listening to Calexico, a band I know very little about because it was recommended to me by a friend. So far I've only discovered their album Carried to Dust, and some stuff they've done with Iron and Wine. If you like mostly chill indie with a little salsa beat, this is for you. My favorite song on this album is "Man Made Lake" - I love how the song layers steady beats to grow in intensity. I also like the variety of the album, and am excited to discover more of their stuff.

• Eating macarons, and not the ones with coconut. I was turned onto these by the owners of Al's Deli, my favorite francophile deli in Chicagoland. These French desserts are two "cookies" filled with "paste"... I think the key ingredient is almond flour... let me just say they're fabulous beyond description. Especially the chocolate ones. Apparently these are becoming a big thing: I've also become addicted to Tastespotting, and they've recently featured several macaron recipes. Here's one for the mocha spice macarons in the picture. (image and recipe from the blog Baked in Birmingham!)
• Still checking out Alexander McQueen's 12 inch high-heeled shoes from New York Fashion Week. The New York Times had a fun article about shoes and what they do to us ladies, body and soul. But you have to admit these shoes are pretty cool to look at, no matter how impractical and painful to wear. I love the crazy shape and textures. High fashion is so much fun when it makes you debate the interesting things you could wear. (image from the NYT article - my favorite is the center!)

The Memphis Airport

Yay first post in a looong time...

Two weeks ago I got stuck at the Memphis airport alone for 10 hours. My flight landed on time, sat on the runway for 40 minutes, and I got off the plane 10 minutes before my next connection was supposed to leave... Even an Olympic sprinter would have missed it. And there are apparently few other people flying from Memphis to my hometown in South Carolina on a Monday morning, hence no other flights for the next 10 hours. This longer-than-normal airport experience gave me plenty of opportunities to figure out how airport design could be improved, even when the delays are still long and uncontrollable. These are my top three improvements, and were picked because many airports other than Memphis could do the same.

First of all, noise. I really wanted to take the 10 hour opportunity as some rare do-nothing-and-be-lazy time and read, but it was hard to find a quiet corner. I'm ok with other people on their cell phones, or random announcements telling so-and-so their plane is leaving. However, the TV screens blasting CNN at every gate are not ok. The announcers completely get rid of what could be a relaxing hour or two to yourself with a book and your iPod. And who decided I want to know about the news right then?? Why can't I choose when to find out what's going on? For some reason, TVs blasting the news seem to be very popular in US airports (Atlanta, Cincinnati have them too). The easy solution to this would be subtitles and an area for TV watchers. The other noise I'm not ok with is the "The threat level has been raised to orange." If you are trying to scare me, please just do it at the entrance and around security. At the gate, I'm already stuck inside and going nowhere no matter how high or low the threat level is. Plus, I think it's been at orange for quite awhile, so this doesn't add any new information and takes away from the announcements at the gates.

Second, food and tables. I had to search for something other than coffee at my end of the terminal and found exactly one suitable sandwich shop that would let me buy a meal and take it to sit where I would be comfortable while waiting for my flight. There were several smaller issues here: finding a meal I could take with me to a different location, finding a location to eat, and finding the food in the first place. Food courts are great, but sometimes I don't want to walk all the way out of the terminal to get food, nor do I just want coffee. The place I found was flooded with other people who also decided not to walk all the way back to the other end of the terminal. There was therefore nowhere to sit and eat leisurely with my computer. I think that a little more focus on food and its placement would change the airport experience considerably.

Third of all, free wireless. I feel a little weird listing this as my third improvement, but I'm a poor student, and free internet is a must. More importantly, I feel that there are enough travelers out there who get online to pass the time or do work, and how much does it really cost you to set up? I know plenty of people have iPhones, but I think this would be a great experience improvement for everyone with computers or both.

I actually picked these three options because my small hometown airport in Greenville SC does all three: there's little noise beyond what's needed for travel information, there's food in the main area between terminals and inside both (short) terminals, and there's free wireless. I even know a few people who go to the airport early to relax there when they're going to pick someone up. After reading so many papers about how waiting can be improved and even enjoyed (ahem, Disney), I really think airports have a lot of potential.

Umbrellas are Exciting!!

This quarter for one of my classes I worked on an umbrella borrowing service. They're just one of those things that you never have when you need and find yourself carrying around when it's sunny. Since I live in Chicago, a land where weather is everything but predictable, having an umbrella around when you actually need it (aka when the weather has snuck up on you) is apparently kind of a big deal.
So I never really thought that much about umbrellas before, but after looking at a gazillion umbrella images online, they're starting to get pretty interesting. (Sadly I've just discovered that if you Google "umbrella", the first three hits are about Rihanna, and not about everybody's favorite weather protection...) According to Wikipedia, umbrellas have been around more or less as long as civilization, and were originally used as protection from the sun rather than rain. This fact makes when you consider that it started out in Persia, Egypt, and Greece, decidedly more sunny places than Chicago. The oldest record of a collapsible umbrella is 21 AD, so for all you design students trying to improve on that design, good luck!!
The main way to create a cool umbrella these days seems to be the visual design and the shape. (I've now discovered that Rihanna has her own umbrella line with Totes! :-) ) My new favorite umbrella, if I needed one, would be this one from Totes because I like the pattern and the shape. Sadly, I usually chose my umbrella based on how likely I am to lose it... very likely.
Anyways, I'm now paying attention to umbrellas, and not just the kind on the radio. :-)

I Saw the Sign

This sign is found in the main library at my university. Built in the days of students riots, the library was specifically designed to be ridiculously confusing, as was the student center. While I'm all for preventing hordes of students swarming and taking down authority (... hmm, or am I...?) clearly this is a little too much. You know it's bad when you need a sign to show you where something as commonly found as an elevator is.
I'm not really sure how this could be improved beyond reconstructing the whole building. In a way it can be nice that the building is so convoluted: its always easy to find a quiet place to study that nobody else has found. It just might be hard to find your way out again...

Also, on a side note: as students we're really really good at ignoring all the 8 by 11" signs that are posted all over campus telling us to do a million random things. Luckily this guy is on a blank wall, otherwise nobody would ever notice.

Hypermobility and Life, Part 3

This past week I went back to the doctor about pain, numbness, fatigue, etc. and I was once again reminded by how frustrating it is to try and drag some kind of daily solution out of physicians. Grr. I'm doing a project on innovations in the US healthcare system, and I can say it definitely needs a few.

The last topic I wanted to cover on hypermobility before going back to rambling about other things that occupy my mind are fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Both of these often come with hypermobility (in fact, one of the first sites I ever visited about hypermobility was created by this girl who had all three). Since I'm lucky enough not to have either, or only have the fatigue part of CFS, I can't tell you much from personal experience. Here's two great resources, this one is for fibromyalgia, and this one for CFS.

All three syndromes have several overlapping symptoms, mainly involving joint pain. I've read other places that hypermobility and CFS together can also look like multiple sclerosis (MS), since chronic fatigue wears down your awareness and memory. Anyways, when in doubt there are plenty of tests for MS so it should be relatively easy to figure out.

I kind of want to use the end of this post for a feminist rant about how diseases that affect mainly women don't get enough attention, like this or breast cancer. That doesn't seem very fair though since there are men who get this too... I guess my real issue is the conversation between physicians and their patients. Doctors today seem pretty at diagnosing and not too bad at treating specific problems. Things that show up all over the body with a wide range of symptoms seem to throw people off. TV makes this look really cool and sexy with shows like House where the doc is on the clock to figure it out, but in reality there doesn't seem to be as much motivation, and the whole process goes more slowly. Hopefully with this project we'll find a way for general practitioners to communicate more easily with specialists, and for specialists to talk to each other, so that they share information instead of shuffling the patient around and letting them put the pieces together for themselves.